When cooking hot dogs, sausages, kielbasa, or other somewhat cylindrically shaped foods upon a grill or barbecue rack, the cook is presented with the challenge of removing such foods from the cooking surface and transporting the food to another location, a receptacle or a ready bun. The shape of such foodstuffs lends to a high probability that the item will roll off the ordinary spatula. The cook may choose to employ a fork or tongs to remove the food, but that would necessitate the setting aside of one utensil, for example, the ordinary spatula, and searching for and retrieving another tool. Moreover, a cook is likely to prepare other foods concurrently with the hot dogs, such as hamburgers, for which the utensil of choice is a spatula-like tool. Thus, a spatula which can accommodate hot dogs or the like would be more efficient, useful and convenient for a cook to use rather than having to search for and swap various utensils.
A culinary implement is described in U.S. Pat. No. 1,856,769 issued May 3, 1932 to Latshaw, which has straight tines as well as tines formed with wavy portions. The wavy tines are positioned below the plane of the top edges of the top edges of the straight tines. This device was intended to serve as a stirring implement for expeditiously mixing, stirring, beating, cutting and serving doughs, gravies, mashed potatoes and the like. Although the wavy portions of the invention may tend to facilitate the removal and transport of amorphous clumps of food such as mashed potatoes, the placement of a hot dog or sausage atop the device would appear to be no more stable and indeed even less stable than placing same on a flat spatula, given the placement of the wavy tines below the straight tines.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,489,606 issued Nov. 29, 1949 to Allen, discloses a spatula intended to be relatively inflexible over the majority of the blade portion but having a highly flexible tip portion. Stiffness is achieved by a plurality of longitudinal stiffening corrugations along the length of the blade. The highly flexible tip is achieved by a transverse corrugation which is susceptible to transverse flexing. While this spatula may provide a flexible joint for its tip portion to follow the contours of various surfaces, the invention provides no enhanced capability to manage or contain cylindrically shaped foodstuffs. The transverse corrugation cannot provide any substantial food carrying capability as it is designed to be the flex point for the outermost tip of the spatula. Moreover, the patent teaches a transverse corrugation in the shape of a half-cylinder having a radius on the order of 3/32 inch.
Similarly, the picnic fork disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,858,611 issued Nov. 4, 1958 to Arneberg relates to tine or skewer-equipped devices for cooking frankfurters, wieners, etc., the invention employing connecting cross sectionally U-shaped rib sections to impart rigidity to the tines, connector and shank. The invention clearly contemplates piercing a hot dog before cooking, then inserting both hot dog and picnic fork over a heat source. The invention cannot be easily used as a spatula, and has no inherent ability to balance a hot dog or sausage upon its surface.
Design U.S. Pat. No. 54,150 issued on Nov. 4, 1919 to Underhill shows an "Asparagus Server or Similar Article" as having three upwardly concave receptacles for holding asparagus. The outermost edges of the receptacles curve upward and inward, preventing the invention from being used as a spatula. Apparently, a user of the invention would place each asparagus in a receptacle by hand, or scoop asparagus out of a pile of asparagus situated in a bowl or on a plate.
In a similar manner, the scoop shown in Design U.S. Pat. No. 307,855 issued on May 15, 1990 to Light, Jr. has an upwardly concave receptacle. While the invention might be useful for retrieving cylindrically shaped foods from a pile of food situated within a bowl or on a plate, the invention would be more difficult to use when retrieving same from a flat surface because the outermost edge of the receptacle curves upwardly.
Accordingly, it is a principal object of the present invention to provide a device for retrieving objects, and particularly, to cylindrically shaped foods such as hot dogs, frankfurters, wieners, sausages, kielbasa, and the like, from a support surface, which is typically substantially horizontal, such as a grill or barbecue, and transporting such objects or foods without their dropping off the spatula.
It is another object of the invention to provide such device as can be used as well with other generally elongate objects or foods having various cross-sectional shapes.
It is an additional object of the invention to provide such device which is economical to construct.
It is yet another object of the invention to provide such device which is easy to use.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such device which is rugged and durable.
Other objects of the present invention, as well as particular features, elements, and advantages thereof, will be elucidated in, or be apparent from, the following description and the accompanying drawing figures.